Breaktime (15 page)

‘I’ve been puzzling about that one ever since we were climbing the scar and I realized there was more to my plot than met the eye.’

‘And?’

She breathed in deeply and out again, gathering herself for something difficult to say.

‘I know I’ve got a reputation as an easy lay and I play up to it. But boys are shocking boasters. You give them a sweaty grope for five minutes and to hear them talk afterwards you’d think they’d outclassed Casanova. As a matter of fact, I’ve gone all the way only four times. No more. Honest. Well, four and a half times.’

‘And a half!’

She chuckled, her brittle everyday school self breaking through. ‘The half was a dishy mutual acquaintance from the first fifteen reputed to be an experienced randy stud, a challenge therefore not to be passed up. He enticed me—so
he
thought—into his room when his parents were out one evening. We were at a point of no return when we heard his mother’s voice in the street outside. By then I wasn’t in a state to care. But you’d be surprised what a mother’s voice can do to a boy!’

We neither of us laughed.

Helen released my hand, turned bodily away, facing the dale.

‘I’m sorry. That was cheap.’

‘Inappropriate just now, that’s all.’

We stared at the distant river; she, no doubt, regretting her words, me regretting the withdrawal of touching hands. For a moment we lost contact.

‘I can be cheap,’ she said after a while, so quietly I could hardly hear her. ‘Loud. You know? Blowsy. Maybe I get my reputation as much because of that as because of anything I . . . do. It’s just that there are times when I can’t help being . . . I don’t know . . .’

‘Crude?’

‘Yes, not to put too fine a point on it. Bloody crude.’

‘Like sometimes wanting to fart in public. Just to shock.’

She laughed and flopped on to her side facing me. Closely.

‘You understand.’

‘I think so.’

‘It’s as though two people are inside me, quite different
people
who have to take it in turns at being me.’

The nearness of her body was intoxicating, like the wine, going to my head. My body tingled with paradoxes. Drowsy yet every cell aware of Helen’s warm presence. Relaxed yet trembling for her touch. Unrestrained yet afraid of making the slightest wrong gesture which might break the spell. Careless of meaning and consequence yet anxious for reason and purpose.

‘Tell me about your two people,’ I said, wishing only to preserve somehow the presence of this moment.

‘O,’ she said, her eyes avoiding mine, ‘one of them is always wanting to go new places, meet new people, do new things. The other is scared of all that, is shy, I suppose, afraid, never sure of herself, not wanting to fail and always feeling she has. One of me is always wanting to break the rules and outrage everybody, especially my parents. That’s why I’m crude sometimes and like being thought an easy lay. I started taking the pill just to shock my parents. Or was it because the other one inside me was scared things might go wrong? Because the other one hates upsetting people or getting into trouble.’

‘Which one is you now?’

Her eyes found mine and held them with a cool firmness a little frightening in its strength.

‘Which one would you prefer?’

I tried to smile, to joke, ‘Can’t I have both?’

She did not smile in reply. ‘I’ve never tried being both at once before. Is it possible, do you think?’

How could I answer?

Her slim length lay patterning mine so closely I could feel the warmth of her body, yet nowhere touching. My eyes explored her face; her eyes travelled mine. But looking was not enough. I raised my hand, ran my fingertips slowly over her forehead, down the curve of her cheek to the soft firmness of her jaw, round the bow of her chin, up to her lips.

She kissed my fingertips, a sensual caress.

I bent over her, kissed her mouth tentatively, but then, finding eager response, with force. She gripped me to her, pulled my
shirt
from my jeans, thrust her hand beneath, stroked my back, firmly searching.

Time collapsed, obliterating memory.

Clothes were suddenly an intolerable encumbrance. I plucked impatiently at her flimsy shirt as if it were riveted armour.

‘Wait, wait!’ she said. A laugh as hasty as her breathing mocked my careless urgency. She sat up and pulled the shirt off over her head.

She wore nothing beneath. Her bare back shone before me and then she turned in a quick, self-conscious movement, showing herself to me. The narrow length of her neck, framed by her hair. The fall of her shoulders, marble smooth. The rounded, lifting nipple-budded breasts above her incurving belly. The pale flush of her skin.

The breathcalming pure pleasure of her made redundant any photograph. I felt no wish to rush ahead. Only I had to reach up and touch with privileged fingers the hard bud of each breast. A confirmation of reality; no self-abusive fantasy this. Then feast my eyes a while.

‘I was with a bloke yesterday,’ I said, needing to clear my throat before I could speak with confidence, ‘who said that we are all users, that everybody uses everybody else. I suppose he meant there’s no such thing as altruism.’ I ran my hands over her breasts, down her bending sides: a tactile fragrance of flesh. ‘Do you believe that?’

‘I haven’t thought about it.’

‘And don’t want to?’

Her eyes were closed. She shook her head. Waving hair. All of her body focused.

‘Don’t talk any more, word child,’ she said.

She shifted her position, sitting so that

Don’t talk, she says, but the mind

she could undo the buttons of my

goes on. Why won’t it stop? Give up
.

shirt, which she accomplished slowly,

Give up itself to what is happening?

laying the shirt from my chest. Her

It damn well thinks, damn well goes on

cool, tender hands then moving over me,

thinking, watching what is happening

soothingly inflammatory, a beginning

like a spoiled indulged child. Shut

of physical crescendo.

up, damn you, shut it
.

Her hands ran down my chest,

There is dazzle-blue sky above

across my stomach. Found the clasp of my

framed in the tent door opening flap

jeans. Undid it. Drew down the zip.

door peak. Shut it. Say the nine times

Pushed jeans and pants below my knees.

table     once nine is nine two nines

Cooling air feathered my loins.

are eighteen three nines are twenty-

A delicious greeting to my nakedness.

seven four nines are something or other

And Helen’s hands, coming with the

five nines are more than that

breeze, hardly heavier of touch.

ten nines are ninety is easy

Searching, fondling, encouraging.

you just put the nought on
        
o god

For moments that were

the pleasure      shut it     shut head

endlessly short this was all

close down     off the air     off in

I wished for, all I had ever

the air     ha     o god don’t laugh

wanted.

laugh please don’t laugh it’s

But then rising in me, a

not done     not done     not in the oven

gathering of every lusting sensation

yet     ha     o please don’t laugh

flowing from every cell of my body

under my spread arm spread hands I feel

to that straining centre, wanted

grass knife-blade-sharp, coarse

body on body, a clutch of source

soil beneath grasp the crystal

of pleasure to whole possession.

earth no grasp her grasp shut it

I grasped at her. For a fearful

enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy enjoy

moment she was gone. But then

shut it words are like boulders

was back again.

thoughts are like broadsides fired

And naked.

against my bodypleasure
     
why?

As I was

o why?     o sylvan wyeswale

And as eager

is this what makes body

As blind

is this the howdyado
     
the I’m all

As grasping

right jack
     
the deflowering of ditto

As clinging

the cider rosie had

As sinuous of body

is this the stars in

As flooded with strength

my eyes     my eyes     close my eyes

And energy

in excelsis

And fire.

shut it

She pulled at me,

is this the way

turning me over upon her, urgently,

aboard the lugger

as she fell back upon

and now let

the ground.

battle commence

And gave me entrance

just shut it

with a deep delighting sigh.

shut it

And then there were

shut it

no more

shut

words

it

no more

it

thoughts

It

Nothing but movement

Body on

Flesh on flesh on

Mouth and hands and legs and

thrusting

driving

wild

relief

felt

during her

high

long

scream

Patterns of Lovemaking

There is not much point in trying to describe lovemaking—whether it is hand-holding, embracing, fondling or intercourse. It is experienced as a matter of emotion and relationship more than action.

Though we think of lovemaking as instinctive, as indeed it is primarily, the patterns of expression vary widely in different parts of the world. This shows that we learn many aspects of it while growing up—from books, movies and TV, from what we notice in parks and on beaches, from what we see our parents doing and not doing. . . .

In the more drawnout love-making, lips, tongue, hands may make loving contact with lips, tongue, breasts or genitals—for several minutes or for many. Each couple after months and years of variation tends to settle on patterns which give the greatest mutual pleasure. A few couples even progress all the way to the climax of orgasm while engaged in the forms of lovemaking which most people consider only preliminary—because in this manner they reach ecstasy more surely or more pleasurably than by genital intercourse. For most couples, however, the ultimate desire is for intercourse, in which the man inserts his erect penis into the woman’s vagina. Her labia and vagina have been made more moist than usual by her excitement, so the penis can slip in more easily. The man has the instinct to thrust his hips rhythmically backwards and forwards to move the penis partly out and in again, to increase the sensation for both. Intercourse can last fifteen seconds or a man can learn to hold back his orgasm so that intercourse lasts for fifteen minutes or more. As the couple come nearer to orgasm, both partners usually want the rhythmic motion to become more vigorous and the woman may participate in it too. At the moment of orgasm—and generous, experienced lovers try to make their climaxes come simultaneously—they are overwhelmed by five or ten seconds of intense, pulsating pleasure while the ejaculation occurs, and they cling tightly together. After orgasm there is usually a feeling of complete satisfaction and peace which often leads to sleep.

—
A Young Person’s Guide to Life and Love
,

by Dr Benjamin Spock,

Bodley Head,

1971.

Thought returns

A sense of place

Of being

exhausted flat-out quenched desireless body able still to pleasure in the aftertaste of body on body made poignant by a reasonless sense of loss sweet with gratitude but still no words to speak no wish to say

1
The worst case of unexpected sex education I have so far heard of was told me by Simon Feldman, who claimed that Lisa Pringle, whose father was an undertaker, trapped him in the workshop behind her father’s office one Saturday afternoon, backed him into an upright coffin and there molested him. Had the coffin not been de luxe lined, Simon said, he did not think he would have survived the ordeal, which has understandably left him with a strong prejudice against undertakers, whose profession he was at one time considering as a career because, he said, as an undertaker he would never be out of work.

END GAME